perfect house but shared drive and maintenance fee

[Evecob]

After months of looking, we found a house that would work really well for us (family of 4) in October, we are due to exchange contracts in January.

It's got 4 good size double bedrooms all over 10ft by 10ft, one room would be the office/gaming room. Its got a layout we could work with downstairs, a conservatory off the livingroom for our toddler and baby to use as a playroom/store their toys, a utility room, a kitchen breakfast room and a separate dining(we could knock through to make kitchen diner). A south west facing garden and a single garage with space for 2 cars beside the house. The house itself we love. The front is pretty private with a lovely green ending in raised trees.

However I am now having a few concerns after finally being told the charge for the upkeep of the area by the vendors. When we made the offer we knew the house would have a maintenance fee for the upkeep (its a newish build built in 2014, the house we currently live in also has one) but it is £150 more than ours (almost 300 for the year) and they have complained about the management company, told us how useless they are at keeping the area maintained. When we viewed the house, it looked great to us, there's a lovely green right out the front of our house.

We also have a shared drive, with one other house on the end who would need to drive past us, and one other house at the entrance to the drive. We have our own 2 spaces in front of our garage for both of our cars with no issue and there is a car park close to the shared driveway where cars on the new build estate can park, every time we have gone we have got a spot, so guests could park there.

Would the maintenance company fee and shared driveway put you off from buying this house?

I’d want to know is there a cap on how much they can increase the fees each year. That would worry me more than the shared drive .

Does the price of the house reflect the ongoing maintenance obligations?

I personally don’t like the idea of shared drives and maintenance fees so I wouldn’t. BUT I hate the idea of these two things so my view may be strongly biased as I am blinded by my dislike so cannot give a reasonable view.

Would the maintenance company fee and shared driveway put you off from buying this house?

It would be enough for me to rule it out but it’s such a personal thing.

You’re actually in a better position than most to decide because you’re already paying a similar fee for a similar arrangement. How have you found it?

I can't quite envisage this. Is the driveway down the side of your house and it leads to garages and spaces for 3 houses? How would you feel if people were getting work done and there were building trucks going up and down?
I may be misunderstanding the entire layout though!

mainly because we have a playpark right outside our house and we use it so much, and the field is well kept we are happy with it. But its a different company, and our current fees are much cheaper, £12 a month instead of £23...

So the driveway... you turn into it from the carpark on the top left, theres a house on that corner when you turn which faces the carpark, so the side of that house is facing the field, you drive past it and you come to our house, which is facing the field, it has 2 parking spaces next to it, the garage is set back from the house to allow 2 cars to park next to our house off the drive. Going past our house is another house also facing the field and has a similar arrangement.

I think most people dislike shared drives with the parking next to each other, yours sounds like the parking is separate and the drive is shared access?

yes the parking is separate completely, the drive is shared access, sorry I think I was getting the wording confused!

Sounds like you're describing a private road rather than a shared driveway? Although I suppose you could argue they're the same thing. Pretty standard on new build estates because the council like the roads they adopt to be kept to a minimum (god forbid they have extra outgoings with all that new council tax revenue coming in). Our access is a private road (not shared - each house owns the bit in front). Wouldnt put me off as long as you've got your own parking, which you say it does.

Maintenance fee is another matter. Ours is similar to your current one, although god knows what for, all there is is a sorry looking strip of grass at the entrance 🙄 wouldn't be hugely happy with £300 a month but I guess depends what it's for and if the house is otherwise perfect I'd probably suck it up. We looked at one where the fee was only £70 but it was for flood defences 😐😐

I think it was 300 a year . Wasn't it ?

So it's a road not a drive? That isn't an issue surely?

If everything else about the house you like, these things wouldn't put me off. Better that the drive/private road is used by several homes as you're maybe less likely to have issues with misuse/obstruction.

I think linking it will help clear things up. Over the small fence in front of property is a nice strip of green

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/97107110#/

Sorry yes I meant £300 a year. £300 a month I'd definitely pass 😂

Those aren't shared drives. They are roads, and they're wide enough to pass a parked car on so it would be a non issue for me.

I wouldn't ever wish to pay a service charge and don't like new builds so that's an individual choice that only you can make!

Are there any planning permissions on that field. From the layout it looks like the current estate is phase 1 of a larger development. Especially from the aerial view the pp posted. It’s such an inefficient road layout unless the longer term plan is to build more on the other side. That would worry me much more than the service charge or the shared drive.

Exactly my thinking about how it appears to be phase one. The field will be gone I'd imagine in a year or two.

It's a new development as the street view actually is still at bulldozing stage!

I'd walk away.

We live on a similar shared drive/road and pay a maintenance fee, both are fine so I wouldn't let have those put you off. I'd be more concerned about building on the field. I'd also check if there's a limit regarding how much the maintenance fee can increase.

The shared road is fine, we had similar before and do now, causes us no issues, what concerns you about it exactly? I like it as it means we are in a private cul de sac, no random passers by.

The maintenance fee, that's a tough one, it is worrying how much they can go up and if you are after a new ish house most of them will have them. I think you need to talk to your solicitor about that, we have offered on houses with maintenance fees (we missed out on them) perhaps I was naive but it wasn't enough to scare me off, if it was a house I really loved and ticked all the other boxes I would probably proceed.

Is there a cap on the maintenance fee?

I was chatting to an estate agent last week. I had said that my only real deal breaker was a house on a housing estate with management fees because of the lack of control you then have over finances. She said that she was starting to come across mortgage lenders who were refusing mortgages unless a retrospective convenant was added to the deeds capping the potential increase in fees. And that she thought that situation would become more and more common. Perhaps something to think about in terms of resale, if this isn't a forever home?

There's also a Tayloe Wimpey estate around here where the management fees have tripled in the few years that the estate has been built. The residents are thoroughly pissed off, as there seems to be no practical reasons for the increase other than greed, but are powerless to do anything about it. That's why it's a deal breaker for me.

Oh and opt for the planning aspect of searches, forget what it's called it's an add on, just to check what that field is destined for, bare in mind it could be built on.

Not really concerned about your example of a shared drive. From your description it's just like living on a narrow lane. We used to live somewhere with a shared drive, which meant we had a neighbour who needed to cross our drive to get to theirs. It was real pain and we said never again. The maintenance charge is more concerning, and the fact there are problems with the management company. How many properties pay that charge, and what do you get for it? Is it a leasehold property?

The drive wouldn't bother me, the maintenance fee would. I wouldn't want to be tied into having to have the money spare and the risk of it rising.
As someone else said is it freehold or leasehold? I wouldn't buy leasehold.
I also don't like my south west facing garden but that's just personal preference. The garden is unbearably hot on summer evenings.

What does the maintenance fee cover? That would be my main question. If there's extensive gardening, street lighting, pumping station, play park, etc etc, then it's not so bad but it really depends. Is the £300 first year budget, if the site is still under construction? Be wary as developer budgets are crap not very accurate in my experience.

Are there any flats on the development? I ask because if there are leasehold tenancies contributing to the estate charge, you are a lot more protected - the Landlord and Tenant Act comes into play which means that they can challenge for reasonableness in tribunal. If not then it's much harder to a) challenge costs and b) move away from an existing entrenched agent or manco. There may also or alternatively be a mechanism in the TP1 documentation to hand management over to owners. Which means that in the fullness of time the residents on the site will be able to place contracts and control finances.

Finally, check how many of the complaints actually relate to maintenance and how many are to do with the ongoing development. Handover to a management company is extremely difficult because the developer wants to get people on site as soon as possible, while the build is underway, and although the agent might take over gardening, if there's (for example) no street lighting as it hasn't been connected yet, or no block paving as it's one of the last things to go down, or anything of that sort, if the agent is any good they will have refused handover and it will still be down to the developer to resolve.

I would not buy that house.